


Prisoner's Dilemma

by she_who_the_river_could_not_hold



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drabble, F/M, Gen, Tropes, season 5 spoilers (mild), the hostage taker and his GIRLFRIEND
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-10 02:03:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14727881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/she_who_the_river_could_not_hold/pseuds/she_who_the_river_could_not_hold
Summary: While Charmaine is trying to get Bellamy and Clarke to cooperate with her, she realizes that what she had assumed was a hostage taker and his girlfriend is actually a much more complicated situation than she had originally thought. And she’s more than willing to use that to her advantage.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Since Charmaine doesn’t actually describe it, [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma) is a link to what the prisoner’s dilemma is! It’s a really fascinating thing and is a really cool thing to know about, whether it comes to writing, researching, or playing Jackbox TV’s game “Murder Party.” Also idk if this would come up in the season, but I feel like her quote was the perfect set up for a trope-style scenario like this one. 
> 
> This is my first Bellarke fic ever but I couldn't get this idea out of my head so here it is!

Charmaine stopped her pacing just long enough to cast a long, hard look at Bellamy and Clarke. Even though their gags had been removed, the two remained silent. 

 

Clearly they had done this before.

 

With a sigh, she walked over to the table beside them and hoisted her gun holster over her shoulder to rest it on the table. She spared a glance behind her.

 

Still no reaction.

 

They were good.

 

Leaning against the table with her hip, Charmaine crossed her arms in front of her chest.

 

“You two know about the prisoner’s dilemma?”

 

Clarke twitches in her seat, her hands flexing in and out of fists as her wrists rub against the metal bindings. Bellamy lets out a long breath through his nose. But they continue to remain silent. It’s no matter to her though. She’s got all night and all day. And she knows how to get people to talk. 

 

“One of my talents has always been getting people to talk,” Charmaine began, pushing herself off of the table and stalking towards to the two leaders. It was almost unnerving how focused they could remain on each other, their eyes having yet to leave the other’s face. 

 

“It’s a specialty. Knowing how just to cut through to their core. It was easy with that kid of yours. As capable as she seems to be, you and I both know she’s just a kid. So you talked. Do you remember that Clarke? Our first day together?”

 

She lightly places a hand on Clarke’s shoulder. However the second her hand touches the worn leather, it’s not her who reacts. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices Bellamy suddenly jerk in his confines. She twists her head around some more so that she and Clarke are both facing him. The fearless leader who had dropped from the sky to save his people. Right now, that in-command composure he’s had seems to be weakening. His lips are pursed and his eyes have narrowed. It’s subtle, but she can almost feel the tension in him rising to the surface.

 

Oh, now this is getting good.

 

She fully turns now so that she’s just behind Clarke, her hand never leaving her shoulder.

 

Testing her theory again, Charmaine tightened her grip, her fingers curling in and applying more pressure. 

 

Bellamy shifted in his seat, clearly trying to keep his reactions to a minimum but judging by how his jaw was twitching, he wasn’t pleased.

 

“You found yourself a winner,” she whispered into Clarke’s ear, feeling her tense up underneath her grip. “McCreary gets the job done, but still. Yours is a little easier on the eyes.”

 

She straightens back up, placing her other hand on Clarke’s other shoulder and staring Bellamy down. He still hadn’t let his eyes drift from Clarke’s face, but Charmaine is pretty sure she can now see a vein pulsing in his forehead.

 

“Since neither of you told me otherwise, I’ll go ahead and assume you don’t understand the prisoner’s dilemma. But with neither of you feeling much like talking, I don’t see much of a difference but to separate the two of you and see what happens.”

 

They stay silent.

 

“I’ve always wanted to try this out with lovers,” she adds on almost absentmindedly.

 

And that’s when everything changes.

 

She feels a shudder rush through Clarke, her breath being sucked in. Bellamy closes his eyes in pain? Guilt? Every muscle in his body has clenched. A wolfish grin stretches across her face, squatting down so that she’s parallel with Clarke. 

 

“He doesn’t know, does he?”

 

The question lays heavy between them.

 

It’s the first time that the two haven’t been able to reach their eyes.

 

“You know, I had thought that you had gotten yourself a really smart man Clarke. And I’m rarely wrong. But he really doesn’t know.”

 

Her voice is calculating, taking in each of their reactions. The inhale that Clarke makes is stuffy and Charmaine has a feeling that if she was to turn the blonde’s face towards her, she’d see tears tracking down her cheeks through the dirt and grime. Bellamy is almost shaking his head, pleading to himself, silently. It’s more suffering than Charmaine thought a person could inflict on themselves with words alone. 

 

“But he knows now,” she says, a tone of finality to her voice.

 

Before the two can react, she yanks Clarke up to her feet. She sways, struggling from having been seated for so long. She instantly tries to fight back, but the tight cuff around her wrists inhibits any real attempts to break free. Bellamy starts at that, his eyes flying from their upward prayer to Clarke’s face. She shakes her head aggressively, still fighting to stay silent. 

 

Charmaine wrestles to move Clarke closer to the table, her other hand swiping her gun up. As she does what she can to shift her and Clarke towards one of their makeshift interrogation rooms, McCreary stepping in from outside, there’s a sudden clatter and a shout.

 

“NO.”

 

She whirls around to see Bellamy on the ground, his knees keeping him up as the chair lays knocked over beside him. His chest is heaving and so much like that first night, when he had interrupted them, he only has eyes for Clarke. Charmaine flits her gaze back to the object of his focus and indeed sees tears flowing down her face. Tears of terror.

 

And of relief.

 

“I’ll talk, just let her go,” Bellamy says, his voice hoarse with urgency.

 

Charmaine casts a smile at McCreary and jerks her head for him to return back outside (he does so with a sullen glare).

 

She had known from that first moment that Clarke was important to Bellamy. And that the importance ran deeper than just partners in leadership. It was an unexpected twist for it to be news to each other, but it was news that she was more than ready to use to her advantage.

 

After all, she was never wrong.


	2. Staring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had originally not planned on writing a follow up to that first chapter, but Tumblr has been getting me super pumped up and nervously excited about what's to come (Bob what do you mean those episodes are great for Bellarke??). So I gave into my dreamy, shipper heart and wrote this out. Maybe it's total fan service, maybe it's a potential way things could come about? Either way, I hope you enjoy this and it makes up for there not being an episode tonight!

The room is empty and cold now. Silence except for the gush of the water coming out of the makeshift faucet that Clarke is currently standing at. Bellamy’s figure looms just behind her and she refuses to face him. Not like how she had been staring at him while Charmaine had tried to question them, their eyes never leaving the other as they stayed steadfastly silent.

 

But more like when Charmaine had dropped a bomb of a different kind. 

 

They’d since told her everything it felt like she would want to know. She’d taken notes, called that Lieutenant Shaw guy in to take notes. Hadn’t said a word while they had talked. And then with a somewhat knowing smirk, she had left them in the room, a heart-stopping grate of metal on metal indicating the status as prisoners as the deadbolt shut behind her.

 

“We need to talk,” had been Bellamy’s statement to her minutes after the door had shut.

 

She hadn’t answered him at first, making her way over towards the sink.

 

But she knew she couldn’t avoid him.

 

“It’s okay Bellamy, we did what we had to do. Someone needs to stop Octavia before this goes to far and if that means we had to tell Charmaine ––” her voice cracks as she scrubs at her wrists. As if it’ll get rid of the red burns that decorate her wrists now their metal entrapments are gone.

 

Bellamy’s hand reaches out and stills her own.

 

“Clarke, that’s not what I meant.”

 

His voice is low, a steadiness to it that’s purely him but still new to her ears. A result of those six years of him being up in space and it’s that thought that sends a shiver racing down Clarke’s spine with a catch of her breath. His hand burns against hers. Body heat. A slight pressure that she never let herself believe was gone, but never able to convince herself she’d feel it again.

 

She doesn’t dare look at him.

 

“You didn’t… you didn’t have to come. If it had just been me ––”

 

“If it had just been you, who knows what she would have done to you. What that McCreary guy would have done to you. I _needed_ to be there.” 

 

When she doesn’t respond, he squeezes her hand slightly. Her eyes drag from her palms to his face and her expression melts as she looks into his eyes. She hadn’t forgotten how intensely they could look at her. Staring straight into her as if she was entirely open for him to read.

 

She imagines she probably is.

 

He offers her a small grin, that crooked smile he used to give her when she was feeling helpless.

 

“Together right?”

 

She lets out a helpless laugh at that. She can’t help it – even amongst all of this chaos Bellamy knew how to make her smile again. Even after all this time. 

 

His eyes are warm as he looks at her and she finds herself unable to pull her gaze away. Earlier during the interrogation, it had been a stare of steal. Determination holding his composure as they silently promised they wouldn’t break. That they wouldn’t let any information loose from their lips, pursed in closure against the probing questions and that they would stay strong as leaders.

 

It had been a stare that they hadn’t been able to keep up as Charmaine had slipped up and called them lovers.

 

The word had raked over Clarke’s heart. 

 

_Lovers_. Something she had been before. 

 

Something that at times during those six years she had thought she may never be again. But it had never been linked to her and Bellamy. Not even from those early arguments when he had towered over her, battling her leadership with points she had begrudgingly learned to respect. Not when she had allowed herself one small kiss on his cheek those years ago when she had needed to exile herself. 

 

Not even at the end of the world.

 

When she had choked back those unspoken words and instead told him to _hurry_. 

 

To hurry back to her. 

 

To hurry back to her side so that they could be the head and the heart again, but in a free environment. Turning their once prison of outer space into their own world to be at peace in. 

 

The eyes staring back at her, those deep brown eyes, are filled with memories that she was there for and ones she wasn’t it. There was a wisdom to them that she didn’t get to see grow, and it’s that thought that sends her eyes downcast again. 

 

Her voice is small now. “You don’t need me.”

 

“Clarke if you’re referring to…” he doesn’t say her name. 

 

When she gives a minuscule shrug, fighting every urge to bury herself in his chest and not think about any of this, he sighs. His hand rubs at his beard anxiously before running through his curls. He still hasn’t stopped staring at her.

 

“Echo and I talked Clarke, before I came after you. For her sake I won’t go into what we discussed, and I don’t think I need to if I’m being honest. But Clarke,” he says her name with such reverence she looks up at him again, “I’m yours.”

 

She sucks in her inhale sharply, trying (and somewhat failing) to disguise her reaction.

 

“What Charmaine said back there, about me not knowing? Maybe I didn’t know completely. But I had dared to hope, all the way until when I stood waiting for you.”

 

Clarke feels her breath growing shallow as Bellamy talks. His voice is still soft but there’s an urgency to what he’s saying. As if he’s needed to say this and he won’t let this chance slip from his grasp again. 

 

“You may not have been up there Clarke, but you - the very idea of you - fueled me to keep going. To not have let you die in vain,” his throat closes on the word _die_. 

 

They’ve been moving closer towards each other as he spoke, his hand never leaving the top of hers. There’s a buzzing in Clarke’s head with a simultaneous clarity that she hasn’t felt in ages. Everything has dropped around them and all she can see is him. Bellamy. _Her_ Bellamy. 

 

He starts to say something else but lets the words fall into nothingness. But she doesn’t need him to say anything else, and maybe she even says that out loud as she sees him nod his head. Her other hand drifts gently to his face, fingertips lightly tracing his cheeks into his beard. Her thumb inadvertently brushes against his lips and he turns his head into her hand, his breath hot as he places a soft kiss to her palm.

 

It’s that simple movement, that intimate, natural movement, that causes her to break.

 

She gasps out a sob and collapses into his arms as he swoops her tightly into his embrace. His jacket no longer smells like the tin-like atmosphere from space. He smells like earth, sweat, a hint of metallic blood. She’s sure she smells the same. But he smells like the Bellamy she had grown to know. He smells like _home_. 

 

He brings one hand up to her hair, his fingers twisting into into and she tilts her head up as he rests his forehead against hers. Their breathing syncs up as they rest for a moment. But then she can’t help it; she can’t hold herself back anymore.

 

She shifts her head just slightly and drops a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

 

When he doesn’t pull back, she shifts again and fully kisses him. She feels his grip tighten on her and she’s lifted to her toes. She can’t tell if the tears coursing down her cheeks are her own or his. His heart thuds against his chest. 

 

The kiss is broken by their own smiles, making it difficult to stay together. She’ll kiss him again later, and hopefully for longer. But as they draw back again she can only find herself staring at him. Taking every bit of him in. 

 

She had survived those six years and she knew they would battle to survive this new war.

 

But with that kiss she already felt like the victor.

 

She could survive anything by his side.


End file.
